Chatham cottage owners dealt a blow

SUSAN MILTON

Wednesday

Nov 23, 2011 at 2:00 AMNov 23, 2011 at 7:55 AM

Five cottages on North Beach Island are facing demolition again - the cottages are not historic and not eligible for federal protection, according to Tuesday's ruling by Keeper Patrick Andrus of the National Register of Historic Places.

CHATHAM — Five cottages on North Beach Island are facing demolition again.

The cottages are not historic and not eligible for federal protection, either individually or as part of a historic district, according to Tuesday's ruling by Keeper Patrick Andrus of the National Register of Historic Places.

All five cottages had been built in 1992 after earlier buildings were destroyed in the 1991 "No Name Storm," he said.

As a result, the 19-year-old buildings don't qualify for the list because they "are not rare surviving examples of an important historic type of structure, nor are they of exceptional importance for history or architecture," he said.

The ruling frees the cottages' owner, the Cape Cod National Seashore, to proceed with plans to demolish the buildings as first proposed in August. The fast-eroding island is an immediate threat this winter to three of the five cottages, Seashore Superintendent George Price believes, based on science and monitoring.

Tuesday's ruling was bad news for the cottages' longtime tenants, who have campaigned against the premature demolition of the cottages, which were rebuilt to survive severe storms.

"It's not over until (our cottage) isn't there any more. We're not done yet," tenant Susan Carroll said Tuesday night, "but this is a major setback."

The tenants had rallied support for their cause from the owners of the island's six other privately owned cottages, Chatham officials, townspeople and the Cape Cod Seashore Advisory Commission.

"We'll review our options once we get the (determination) and see what's going on," Selectman Florence Seldin, chairwoman of the board, said during Tuesday's meeting.

Carroll said the tenants received another piece of bad news on Monday. A separate but related request to place all 11 island cottages on the register as an historic district was disqualified. The request was made by the owners and tenants of the 11 cottages, with the support of Chatham selectmen and the historic commission.

The cottage residents now are waiting to confer with their consultant, Eric Dray, before deciding what to do. Carroll noted that the Seashore's advisory commission last week unanimously recommended delaying demolition plans for a year.

But, at this point, the leases of the five Seashore tenants expire Dec. 31, and all of them are still full of belongings and equipment, Carroll said.

"However this plays out — and it's not looking great — the one thing that we know is that we gave it the best shot possible," she said. "We totally believed in what we did and in what we still may do. We've had 100 percent support from the town, the historic people and the Seashore advisory commission and that feels really good."

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